Tipping the Velvet (29 page)

had routines of my own, like an ordinary girl, might have I moved in at once. That first afternoon I passed in proved rather maddening. When, on my first Wednesday unpacking my few little things, with Gracie beside me there, I went down to breakfast in a yellow waistcoat, Mrs exclaiming over them all, and Mrs Milne bringing tea, and Milne flinched and said: 'Grade don't quite like to see then more tea, and cake. By supper-time I had become yellow in the house,' she said, 'on a Wednesday.' Three days

'Nancy' to them both; and supper itself- which was a pie later, however, we had a custard for tea: food on a and peas and gravy, and afterwards, blancmange in a mould Saturday, it seemed, must be yellow, or nothing . . .

- was the first that I had eaten, at a family table, since my Mrs Milne had grown so used to the fads, she had almost last dinner at Whitstable just over a year before.

ceased to notice them; and in time, as I have said, I grew The next day, Gracie tried my suits, in every combination, used to them, too - calling, 'What colour today, Grace?' as I and her mother clapped. There were sausages for supper, dressed in the mornings. 'May I wear my blue serge suit, or and later cake. The cake being eaten, I changed for Soho; must it be the Oxfords?' 'Shall we have gooseberries for and when Mrs Milne saw me in my serge-and-velvet, she supper, or a Battenburg cake?' I didn't mind, it came to clapped again. She had had a key cut for me, so that when I seem a kind of game; and Grade's way was quite as valid a came home late I should not wake them . . .

philosophy, I thought, as many others. And her basic passion, for the vivid and the bright, I understood very well.

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For there were so many lovely colours in the city; and in a of my family. Davy, I supposed, would be married by now, sense she tutored me to look at them anew. As I strolled and possibly a father - that made me an aunt. Alice would about I would keep a watch for pictures and dresses that I be twenty-five. They would all be celebrating the turning of knew that she would like, then bring them home for her.

the year, today, without me -wondering, perhaps, where I She had a number of huge albums, into which she pasted was, and how I did; and Kitty and Walter might be doing cuttings and scraps: I would find her magazines and little the same. I thought: Let them wonder. When Mrs Milne books, to worry at with her scissors; I would buy her raised her glass at the dinner-table, and wished the three of flowers from the flower-girls' stalls: violets, carnations, us all the luck of the Season and the New Year, I gave her a lavender statice and blue forget-me-nots. When I presented smile, and then a kiss upon the cheek.

them to her - producing them with a flourish, from under

'What a Christmas!' she said. 'Here I am, with my two best my coat, like a conjuror - she would flush with pleasure, girls beside me. What a lucky day it was for me and Grace, and perhaps dip me a playful little curtsey. Mrs Milne Nance, the day you knocked upon our door!' Her eyes would look on, pleased as anything, but shaking her head glistened a little; she had said this sort of thing before, but and pretending to chide.

never so feelingly. I knew what she was thinking. I knew

'Tut!' she would say to me. 'You will turn that girl's head she had begun to look upon me as a kind of daughter - as a right round, one of these days, I swear it!' And I would sister, anyway, to her real daughter: a kindly older sister think for a second how queer it was that she - who had been who might be relied upon, perhaps, to care for Grade when so careful to keep her daughter from the covetous glances she herself was dead and gone . . .

of fresh young men - should encourage Grace and me to The idea, at that moment, made me shiver - and yet I had no play at sweethearts, so blithely, and with such seeming other plans; no other family, now; no sister of my own; and unconcern.

certainly no sweetheart. So, 'What a lucky day it was for But it was impossible to think very hard about anything in me,' I answered. 'If only everything might stay just as it is, that household, where life was so even and idle and sweet.

for ever!' Mrs Milne blinked her tears away and took my And because, since losing Kitty, thinking was the soft white hand in her old, hardened one. Grade gazed at us, occupation I cared for least, this suited me best of all.

pleased, but distracted by the splendours of the day, her hair So the months slid by. My birthday arrived: I had not shining in the candle-light like gold.

marked its passing at all the year before; but now there That night I went as usual to Leicester Square. There are were gifts, and a cake with green candles. Christmas came, gents there, looking for renters, even at Christmas.

bringing more presents, and a dinner. I remembered with The trade is poor, though, in the winter months. The fogs some small, insistent portion of my brain the two gay and the early darkness are kind to the furtive; but no one Christmases that I had spent with Kitty; and then I thought likes unbuttoning himself when there are icicles upon the 245

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wall - nor did I much care for kneeling on slippery cobbles, wearing, I remember, plain linen trousers and a shirt left or wandering around the West End in a short jacket merely open at the neck, and a little straw sailor-hat I had put on for the sake of showing off my lovely bum and the roll of against the strong late-afternoon sun, and forgotten to the hankie at the fork of my trousers. I was glad to have a remove. The room behind me I had let darken; I guessed home that was cosy: gay people go down like skittles in that, apart from the occasional dancing glow of my January, with fevers and influenza, or worse; Sweet Alice cigarette tip, I must be quite invisible against its shadows.

coughed all through that winter - said he was afraid he My eyes were closed, I was thinking of nothing, when all at should do it while he knelt to a gent, a bite his cock off.

once I heard music. Someone had begun to strum some As spring came again, however, the evenings warmed and kind of sweet, twangy instrument -not a banjo, not a guitar -

my curious gaslit career grew easier; but I, if anything, and a lilting gypsy melody was playing upon the bare grew lazier. Now, more often than I ventured out into the evening breezes. Soon a woman's voice, high and streets, I kept at home in my room - not sleeping, only quavering, had risen to accompany it.

lying, open-eyed, half-clothed; or smoking, while the night I opened my eyes to find the source of the sound; it came grew thicker and still, and a candle burned low, and not, as I had expected, from the street below, but from the trembled, and died. I took to throwing wide my windows to building opposite - the old tenement that had used to be so let the voices of the city in: the clatter of cabs and vans grim and empty, and such a contrast to the pleasant little from the Gray's Inn Road; the hoots and the rattles and terrace in which my landlady had her house. Labourers had hisses of steam, from King's Cross; snatches of quarrels and been at work upon it for a month and more, and I had been confidences and greetings, from passers-by - 'Well now, dimly aware of them as they hammered and whistled and Jenny!'; Till Tuesday, till Tuesday ..." When the stifling leaned from ladders; now the building was spruce and heat of June arrived I got into the habit of placing a chair on mended, hi all my time at Green Street the windows my little balcony high above Green Street, and sitting there opposite mine had been dark. Tonight, however, they were long into the cooling night.

thrown open, and the curtains behind them were drawn I passed about fifty nights like this that summer, and quite wide. It was from here that the gay little melody was daresay I could not distinguish so many as five of them issuing: the parted drapes gave me a perfect view of the from all of their fellows. But one of those nights, I curious scene that was being enacted within.

remember very

The player of the instrument - it was, I now saw, a well.

mandolin - was a handsome young woman in a wellI had set my chair as usual upon my balcony, but had turned tailored jacket, a white blouse, a neck-tie, and spectacles; I its back to the street and sat lazily straddling it, with my put her down at once for a lady clerk or a college girl. As arms across each other and my chin upon my arms. I was she sang, she smiled; and when her voice fell short of the 247

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higher notes, she laughed. She had tied a bunch of ribbons behind the curtain ceased her intermittent fanning and rose.

to the neck of her mandolin, and these shook and Stepping carefully around the group, she approached the shimmered as she strummed it.

window: it, like my own, opened on to a little balcony, The little group of people to whom she sang, however, were upon which she now stepped, and from which she surveyed, not quite so gay. A man, in a suit that was rather rough, sat with a mild glance and a yawn, the quiet street beneath.

beside her, nodding with a fixed and hopeful smile; on his There were not more than twelve yards between us, and we knee he held a sweet little girl in a patched frock and apron, were almost level; but, as I had guessed , I was only another whose hands he made to clap in approximate time to the shadow against my own shadowy chamber, and she hadn't melody. At his shoulder leaned a boy, his hair shaved to a noticed me. I, for my part, had still not seen her face. The stubble around his narrow neck and his large, flushed ears.

window and curtains framed her beautifully, but the light Behind him stood a tired-looking hard-faced woman - the was all from behind. It streamed through her hair, which man's wife, I guessed - and she held another infant listlessly seemed curly as a corkscrew, and lent her a kind of flaming at her breast. The final member of the party, a stocky girl in nimbus, such as a saint might have in the window of a a smartish jacket, was only partly visible beyond the edge church; her face, however, was left in darkness. I watched of the curtain. Her face was hidden, but I could see her her. When the music stopped, and there was a self-hands -which were slender and rather pale - with peculiar conscious smattering of applause and then a bit of desultory clarity: they held a card or a pamphlet, which they flapped chatter, still she kept her place on the balcony and didn't in the still, warm air like a fan.

look round.

All of these figures were gathered around a table, upon At last my cigarette burned down, almost to my fingers, and which stood a jar of flaccid little daisies and the remains of I cast it into the street below. She caught the gesture: gave a an economical supper: tea and cocoa, cold meat and pickle, start, then squinted at me, then grew stiff. Her confusion -

and a cake. Despite the long faces and forced smiles, there despite the darkness, I could see from the tips of her ears was something celebratory about the scene. It was, I that she flushed - disconcerted me, till I recollected my supposed, a sort of house-warming party - though I could gentleman's costume. She took me for some insolent not fathom the relationship between the lady mandolinist voyeur! The thought gave me an odd mixture of shame and and the poor, drab little family to whom she played. Nor embarrassment and also, I must confess, pleasure. I took was I sure about the other girl, with the pale hands; she, I hold of my boater and raised it, politely.

thought, could have belonged in either camp.

'G'night, sweetheart,' I said in a low, lazy tone. It was the The tune changed, and I could sense the family growing kind of thing rough fellows of the street - costers and road-restless. I lit a cigarette and studied the scene: it was as menders - said to passing ladies all the time. I don't know good a thing to watch, I thought, as any. At length the girl why, just then, I thought to copy them.

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The girl gave another twitch, then opened her mouth as if to governesses airing babies, and shop-girls taking their make me some rusty reply; at that moment, however, her lunches on the grass. Any of these, I knew, might be led friend approached the window. She had a hat fixed to her into a little conversation by a girl with a smile and a head, and was pulling on her gloves. She said, 'We must go, handsome dress; and I had a fancy - a rather curious fancy -

Florence' - the name sounded very romantic, in the half-for women's company that day.

light. 'It is time for the children to be put to bed. Mr Mason It was in this mood, and with these plans, and in that says he will walk with us as far as King's Cross.'

costume, that I saw Florence.

The girl gave not a glance more my way then, but turned I recognised her at once, for all that I had seen so little of quickly into the room. Here she kissed the children, shook her before. I had just let myself out of the house, and the mother's hand, and politely took her leave; from my lingered for a moment on the lowest step, yawning and place on the balcony I saw her, and her friend, and their rubbing my eyes. She was emerging into the sunlight from rough chaperon Mr Mason, quit the building and make their a passageway on the other side of Green Street, a little way way up towards the Gray's Inn Road. I thought she might down on my left, and she was dressed in a jacket and skirt turn to see if I still watched but she did not; and why should the colour of mustard - it was this, struck by the sun and set I mind it? With the lamplight at last turned upon her face I glowing, that had caught my eye. Like me, she had paused: had seen that she was not at all handsome.

she had a sheet of paper in her hand, and seemed to be I might have forgotten all about her, indeed, except that a consulting it. The passageway led to the tenement flats, and fortnight or so after I had watched her in the darkness, I saw I guessed she had been visiting the family that had held the her again - but this time in daylight.

party. I wondered idly which way she would go. If she It was another warm day, and I had woken rather early. Mrs moved towards King's Cross again, I should miss her.

Milne and Grace were out on a visit, and I had in At last she stowed the paper in a satchel that was slung, consequence nothing at all in the world to do, and no one to crosswise, over her chest, and turned - to her left, towards please but myself. Before my money had all run out I had me. I kept to my step and, as I had before, I watched her; bought myself a couple of decent frocks; and it was one of slowly she drew level with me until, once again, there was those that I had put on, today. I had my old plait of false no more than the width of the road between us. I saw her hair, too: it looked wonderfully natural under the shadow of eyes flick once towards mine, then away, and then, as she the stiff brim of a black straw hat. I had a mind to make my felt the persistence of my gaze, to mine again. I smiled; she way to one of the parks -Hyde Park, I thought, then on slowed her step and, with a show of uncertainty, smiled perhaps to Kensington Gardens. I knew men would pester back: but I could see that she had not the least idea who I me along the way; but parks, I have found, are full of might be. I couldn't let the moment pass. While my eyes women - full of nursemaids wheeling bassinets, and still held her questioning, amiable gaze, I lifted my hand to 251